Emily Rome

Fans dressed as Disney characters are never a rare site at WonderCon, but they appeared a bit more frequently than usual Sunday afternoon, thanks to the presence of the “Once Upon a Time” creators at the pop culture expo in Anaheim. Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz took the stage before an audience that had a scattering of Snow Whites, Belles and Maleficents. The freshman ABC series follows fairy tale characters who have been cursed to live in the real world in the small town of Storybrooke, Maine, with story lines taking place in both worlds. After a screening of tonight’s episode, “Heart of Darkness” (Snow/Charming fans will love this one), Kitsis and Horowitz chatted about the show, mostly staying tight-lipped about what’s to come, with the exception (spoiler alert!) of one tidbit about the finale: The huntsman will return. “And […]

The acclaimed SyFy show “Battlestar Galactica” aired its final episode nearly two years ago but the deep-space (and deep-thinking) epic was still echoing at WonderCon, the pop-culture expo that opened Friday in Anaheim. The first day of the convention featured two Q&A sessions devoted to the show, one with Richard Hatch, who acted in both the original 1978 series and the re-imagined SyFy series that launched in 2004. The other panel featured Kevin Grazier, the scientific advisor for the more recent show. Grazier, who worked for a time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, got a foothold in the entertainment business when he co-wrote a “Star Trek: Voyager” spec script that got him in the pitch process at Paramount. That led to a meeting with “Battlestar” co-creator Ron Moore and, eventually, a gig as scientific advisor. More recently, he’s been a hired brain for Alfonso Cuarón’s […]

You can find our team coverage of “The Hunger Games'” world premiere over at 24 Frames but, in short, the scene was something that could have been staged in the Capitol, the sleek, over-the-top city of sensory overload from the books. “A little bit like this,” producer Nina Jacobson said as she took in the scene. The crowd was dotted with fans taking fashion tips from the “Hunger Games” world — some wore flamboyant Easter-egg colors with long black gloves and hairpieces of purple feather or bright blue tulle; others went for the heroine’s battle-ready ensemble of French braid, orange-lined black jacket and archer’s bow. The most popular symbol? Mockingjay pins (or necklaces or T-shirt logos or hair accessories) , of course, which were worn by fans, staffers and even some members of the press. The stars themselves didn’t seem to get […]

For most TV shows, the long days on set are where a lot of the bonding among actors happens, but for the CW show “Supernatural,” friends are made not just in Vancouver, Canada, where the series shoots, but all around the world at fan conventions. Most recently, the talent behind the horror show now in its seventh season (about two brothers who hunt ghosts, demons and all manner of beasties) got together at Creation Entertainment’s Salute to Supernatural convention, which took place Friday-Sunday in Burbank. Matt Cohen, who plays young John Winchester, the father of lead characters Sam and Dean, has never been in an episode with fellow guest stars Richard Speight Jr. (the Trickster) or Rob Benedict (Chuck). But they “now have become my buddies,” Cohen told the media during a roundtable interview at the convention. “We do Q&As together, and […]

Talk of fairies, princesses and villains dominated the Saban Theatre on Sunday afternoon, as PaleyFest brought the talent behind “Once Upon a Time” to the Beverly Hills venue for a Q&A panel. The ABC show follows fairy tale characters who have been cursed to live in the real world in the small town of Storybrooke, Maine, with story lines taking place in both worlds. Created by “Tron: Legacy” writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, “Once” is currently shooting Episode 20 as the writers work on the script for the season finale. At the event presented by the Paley Center for Media, teases of what’s to come abounded (so watch out for spoilers ahead). Here are 10 highlights from the event. 1. Before the end of Season 1, fans will find out what Snow did to make the Evil Queen hate […]

Comic-Con International, the massive San Diego expo celebrating entertainment of the fantastic, is more than four months away, but it will be the hot topic this weekend: Entrance badges go on sale online Saturday at 8 a.m. PST. Fans that met the Feb. 28 registration deadline to register for a Member ID (a new first step added to the process this year) can purchase badges via Event Planning International Corp. (EPIC). Here’s hoping the rush to secure admittance to the event doesn’t launch the flurry of “epic fail” puns that followed last year’s online badge sales, which crashed Comic-Con’s website on three separate registration opening days. Eventually, on the final attempt in February 2011, the badges sold out in less than one day. An email Comic-Con International sent out to those with Member IDs today declared, “As you know, because […]

The Grid, a world of shimmering, digital wonder, was introduced to moviegoers in 1982 film “Tron” and then taken to a new visual level in “Tron: Legacy” in 2010. Now the Grid is going to television and expanding with a wider mythology and new characters — and more of the sleek, glowing vehicles that fans love. “Tron: Uprising,” which begins this summer on Disney XD, was developed by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, the same tandem that wrote “Tron: Legacy,” and they say the freedom of animation is allowing to explore the Grid without the constraints of a special effects budget. “The fun thing about animation is all the stuff we couldn’t afford in [‘Tron: Legacy’], either because they were financially or technologically prohibitive, we can now do because it’s animated,” Kitsis said. The duo, now also working on its […]

In their office just down the road from Walt Disney Studios, “Once Upon a Time” writers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis paper their walls with their own past (“Tron: Legacy” and “Lost” posters) as well as their influences (“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and a large, light-up poster of George Lucas’ Death Star). “Star Wars,” Horowitz says, is “one of the most iconic pieces of storytelling ever. It was inventing a fairy tale that also felt like it had always been around.” Fairy tale invention and reinvention are the duo’s focus goal these days as they break the story for the first season finale of “Once upon a Time.” Tonight’s episode, meanwhile, is “Skin Deep,” which takes on the tale of “Beauty and the Beast” and reveals more about how much Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin remembers of his life in Fairy Tale Land. During an interview with Hero Complex […]

How great would it be to turn back the clock, peek into the homes of this year’s Oscar contenders and watch their real-time reaction to the nominations announcement? That’s part of the public fascination with a “you-are-there” video made by Andrew Bowler and Gigi Causey, a husband-and-wife filmmaking duo who are now Oscar nominees in the live-action short category thanks to “Time Freak.” The shorts nominees were were announced online Tuesday at 5:50 a.m. and Bowler and Causey’s natural reaction to the nerve-wracking wait was to turn on the cameras. When they actually got nominated, their Tuesday video experiment became a time capsule to share with friends and family but it went well beyond that once it hit the echo chamber of the Internet. “We put [the YouTube video link] on Facebook for friends and family, but the weirdest thing happened – somebody submitted […]

The twists and turns of time travel are in the DNA of “Doctor Who,” “Quantum Leap” and “Star Trek.” But the CW’s “Supernatural” has also become a specialist in turn-back-the-clock television. In Friday’s episode “Supernatural” again goes to the past, this time 1944. “Supernatural’s” Dean and Sam Winchester have chased ghosts, demons and all manner of beasties since their childhood, but time travel wasn’t in the mix until the show’s fourth season, when the angel Castiel (Misha Collins) sent Dean (Jensen Ackles) back to 1973, where he meets his young parents. Since then, “Supernatural” has taken the brothers to the Old West (with “Back to the Future” references galore) and taken an angel to the decks of the Titanic in an episode titled (what else?) “My Heart Will Go On.” In this week’s episode, “Time After Time,” Dean meets Prohibition lawman Eliot Ness (Nicholas Lea, […]